EU climate nominee warns on green energy leadership
By Joshua Chaffin in Brussels | Financial Times | January 16 2010
Connie Hedegaard, poised to become the European Union's first climate commissioner, yesterday defended her handling of the Copenhagen climate summit and warned that the bloc was losing its leadership in green energy.
Ms Hedegaard also said she did not believe there was support in the near term to raise the EU's emissions reductions goal to 30 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, as environmental groups and some member states have urged.
"If we reopen this discussion, we should not fool ourselves: there's a big risk we cannot agree on 30 per cent," she told members of parliament during a confirmation hearing.
Ms Hedegaard's remarks will be closely watched by EU energy and environment ministers, meeting in Seville this weekend to discuss what voluntary emissions pledge the EU should submit by an end-of-month deadline, as agreed at Copenhagen in December .
They will also tackle the more complicated challenge of developing a new EU climate strategy after the bloc was sidelined at Copenhagen. The EU was absent from a decisive meeting with the US and China. Meanwhile, its oft-repeated offer to increase its emissions pledge - from 20 to 30 per cent - if other countries showed similar ambition, was largely ignored.
Still, Ms Hedegaard faul-ted Europe for a fractious approach that undermined its effectiveness. "The last hours in Copenhagen - China, India, the US, Russia Japan - each spoke with one voice while Europe spoke with many different voices," she said. "We are almost unable to negotiate."
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